Indians decry code name for bin Laden

U.S. military used 'Geronimo' for the raid

by Neely Tucker - May. 4, 2011 12:00 AMWashington Post

He died 102 years ago in Oklahoma, a beaten warrior, a prisoner of war, an exile from his homeland, a propped-up sideshow, a gambler and a lukewarm Christian. His family was murdered by Mexicans. The Americans stripped him of most everything else.

And yet, the Apache born near the Gila River in present-day Arizona with the not-very-impressive name of Goyahkla ("One Who Yawns") rode into history as the legendary Geronimo.

It was his name that the U.S. military chose as the code for the raid, and perhaps for Osama bin Laden himself, during the operation that killed the al-Qaida leader in Pakistan. That led to the iconic transmission from the raid: "Geronimo EKIA." Geronimo, Enemy Killed in Action.

In a triumphant moment for the United States, the moniker has left a sour taste among many Native Americans.

"I was celebrating that we had gotten this guy and feeling so much a part of America," Tom Holm, a former Marine, a member of the Creek/Cherokee Nations and a retired professor of American Indian studies at the University of Arizona, said by phone Tuesday. "And then this 'Geronimo EKIA' thing comes up. I just said, 'Why pick on us?' Robert E. Lee killed more Americans than Geronimo ever did, and Hitler would seem to be evil personified, but the code name for bin Laden is Geronimo?"

"There is little doubt (the) use of a leader like Geronimo to refer to bin Laden is ill-advised," Keith Harper, a partner at the Washington firm of Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton and a member of the Cherokee Nation, wrote in an e-mail Tuesday. Harper represented the plaintiff class of 500,000 individual Indians in the landmark Indian trust-funds lawsuit, which last year settled its claims against the U.S. government for $3.4 billion.

"No one would find acceptable calling this arch-terrorist by code name Mandela, Revere or Ben-Gurion," Harper wrote. "An extraordinary Native leader and American hero deserves no less."

Suzan Shown Harjo, president of the Morning Star Institute, a Native American advocacy group based in Washington, has long fought against the use of Indian imagery in American life.

She sighed when asked about the latest iteration of Geronimo.

"It's how deeply embedded the Indian as 'enemy' is in the collective mind of America," she said. "To this day, when soldiers are going into enemy territory, it's common for it to be called 'Indian country.' "

It isn't clear yet which branch of the military came up with the nickname - the Army, Navy, CIA or any of the anti-terror special-forces groups involved - but it apparently wasn't bin Laden's nickname for very long.

A database search of news stories shows that, while military leaders sometimes compared bin Laden's elusiveness to Geronimo's, there is no news account of calling the al-Qaida leader "Geronimo" until this past weekend.